


A Dream Within A Dream

by NightingalesAndHandGrenades (NightingalesAndLions)



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 19:15:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6296653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightingalesAndLions/pseuds/NightingalesAndHandGrenades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A life is a journey one step at the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dream Within A Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gilove2dance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gilove2dance/gifts).



> In all love and respect to Easy Company.  
> Poems by Edgar Allan Poe.

Take this kiss upon the brow!  
And, in parting from you now,  
Thus much let me avow –

Back when the war was going on, David Webster never thought about a world without this war. It was like a headache – once you have it, you think it is never going away and you will never feel good again. But wars end and he is pretty grateful for that. Not utterly concerned for his own wellbeing, but watching Joe break a little more every day, becoming a hard shell from the loud mouthed and energetic man he’s so utterly fallen in love with is too hard. It’s unbearable. They dance around each other for a while, before Liebgott kisses him on the troop ship back to the States. 

It’s sloppy and too quick, but Webster doesn’t complain. He just lets his fingers slide in Joe’s hair and kisses him back. They are both hidden in the darkness on the deck, nothing but the ocean air around them. He suddenly feels free. In that little second, when they break apart, faces still just inches from each other, David feels free from the mud and the blood of the war. He doesn’t want this second to end. He can’t see Joe’s eyes, but his breath is tickling his cheek, Liebgott’s arms sliding around his waist and Webster hugs him with answering force. 

“You left,” Joe’s voice is muffled against David’s neck, the sound of the ship and the waves makin it almost impossible to hear. “You left and I was so angry, because everything was going to hell and you were not there…”

Webster stays silent, because he knows that Joe doesn’t often use words like this. His heart is in his throat, hammering so hard he thinks it’s going to break free and jump overboard. He wants to say something, but it’s useless. Liebgott is silent for a while, breathing in deep, the salty ocean air mixing with something that is only Webster. Stiff leather and old book dust. There is a particular smell to the dust in libraries and old attics. But at least he cannot smell the blood and ash anymore. It has been blood and ash ever since Landsberg.

You are not wrong, who deem  
That my days have been a dream;

All the days seem the same on this damned ship. But something has shifted between them, and Liebott knows that the rest of the men have noticed. He doesn’t care. If they have a problem, they know to come and tell him face to face. Nobody does, so Liebott doesn’t offer anything.

They stay closer to each other, Joe switching bunks with Tab, now sleeping next to David. Webster does not play cards with the rest of the guys and doesn’t talk too much, but he is always just there. Joe can always see him out of the corner of his eye, sometimes watching them with a soft smile on his face that turns Joe’s insides into mush. Sometimes there is a haunted look on David’s face, when he just sits near, writing his journal until his knuckles are white and hands start to tremble. He gets up and leaves, not offering explanation. 

Liebgott later finds him on the deck. There is a cigarette in his mouth and his hands are rgippin gthe railing as hard as they have gripped the pen before. There are tear tracks on his face. 

Joe doesn’t mention it, just stands shoulder to shoulder with the other man, lighting his own cigarette. It’s almost like the silence is sacred between them. 

Yet if hope has flown away  
In a night, or in a day,  
In a vision, or in none,  
Is it therefore the less gone?

They try going their separate ways, but it does not work for long. Webster now can spot the first signs of depression much faster, and Joe sounds angrier on the phone than he did during the war. Life is not the same as it was, and yet, America has not changed. It expects everyone to come back from the war, and… just dive right in. 

Webster returns to school, and avoids his classmates as much as they avoid him. He knows that there is a frightening look in his eyes sometimes. His shoulders are straighter, his senses – sharper. He snaps at boisterous Harvard first years who think they know everything.

Liebgott visits him a month after they have returned to the normalcy of their everyday lives. He finds Webster nursing bloody knuckles and a black eye.

“What the fuck did you do?” is his first sentence, when the door opens and he takes in the sight in front of him.

“It’s good to see you too, Joe, please come in,” David’s voice is laces with heavy sarcasm, but he does take Joe’s bag and coat, and gets him a beer.

“I hate to think what the other guy looks like,” Liebgott later says, running his fingers over the deep dark bruise on David’s face and kissing his knuckles. “You’re a Toccoa guy, they shouldn’t mess with you”.

“The other guy is a first year who thinks Americans should have stayed home from the war, and that we don’t deserve any priviledges just because we went over there,” there is so much venom in Webster’s voice, that Joe shudders.

“Fuck him,” he responds darkly. “Fuck him and every other stupid moron who thinks that, but never did go over there”. 

They sleep next to each other, legs entwined and David’s head resting on Joe’s chest. He strokes Webster’s shoulder and drops a kiss into the messy dark hair. It angers Joe to see David hurt, but there is pride in there as well, because all teasing aside, Joe knows that they are cut from the same cloth. He sends a silent thank you to that son of a bitch Sobel for takin a fragile piece of porcelain, and shaping it into the sculpture of David.

All that we see or seem  
Is but a dream within a dream.

It continues like this for a while. They see each other a couple of times a month, spend days talkin about everythin and nothing. Sometimes Joe reads comics while David studies and writes yet another paper for his classes. They make dinner in an almost domestic manner, side by side and drink beer while the radio is on in the backround. 

Joe loves to see David’s head thrown back in passion, fingers gripping the sheets. He loves seeing this always articulate man reduced to curses, moans and a steady string of chanting Joe’s name like it’s sacred to him. He has never seen Webster pray, but Joe’s own name falling from David’s lips sounds like the only prayer Joe cares for. 

Not knowing, they sometimes watch each other sleep. Joe takes in the peaceful look on Webster’s face, his brow not wrinkled in frustration or worry. There are ink stains of his fingers and Joe’s left bruises on his body. He knows he cannot mark David the way he wants to…they have to be careful, so he does it where people shouldn’t be able to see. They fade over time, but Joe knows, they will remind Webster of him, of this…

He also doesn’t know what ‘this’ is. Joe has never known what it feels like to be in love. He remembers datin girls and having short, faceless encounters with men in dark alleys, but never love. And yet, here he is, in the dark apartment, watching David Webster sleep and guarding his dreams agains the demons that still linger behind the closed eyelids.

This is love for Joe.

I stand amid the roar  
Of a surf-tormented shore,

Webster watches Joe sleep on a cold Autumn night, while the wind is blowing the rain straight into the window, and the moon has hidden behind the clouds. He memorizes Joe’s face as if he was never going to see it again. Joe is like the Autumn rain - a force of nature. These days he sems more like the guy David met in Europe. He keeps coming back.

More than once Webster has wanted to ask Joe to stay forever. To simply take his life and move it somewhere closer, or move it here. He never does, because it seems like playing with fate. There have been no promises of the American dream, an applie pie life with a white picket fence around. 

Joe doesn’t seem the type for it anyway, but if he’s honest, David is afraid, that if he picks at the subject, Joe is going to disappear and not return. It almost seems like a dream, a fruit of David’s own over-heated imagination. On nights like those, he pours himself a glass of whiskey (a wonderful gift from Lewis Nixon nonetheless with a note “Merry Christmas, Harvard! Dick sends his love and I send the booze”) and drinks it slowly, almost counting Joe’s deep and steady breaths.

His love was a candle… now it’s a bonfire.

And I hold within my hand  
Grains of the golden sand --

 

After the second time David gets in a fight with a fellow classmate, Joe takes care of the bleeding knuckles, cursing under his breath. He examines the bleeding on his forehead and puts on stitches Liebgott style. 

“You have to stop messing up that pretty face of yours,” he jokes, but Webster knows he is not really joking. 

It is more of a warning, but they haven’t seen each other much longer than he’s used to, it’s winter and Christmas without Joe has been a tense affair. He allows himself some credit, because the guy was asking for it, and there was alcohol involved. It is a lame excute for fighting, but he doesn’t care. He cannot just stand by while some kid insults Easy company men. 

“You’re fighting more on campus than you did in the war,” Nixon says on the phone. 

They talk every now and then. Sometimes he talks to Winters too. The distance that was always there seem to have disappeared. Perhaps it has to do with those two living together, and Nixon reining in his drinking. It keeps David sane when Joe is away, and it keeps him in the loop of news. The rumor mill of Easy is doing a brilliant job, and everyone knows everything about most of everyone else with a few exceptions.

“Liebgott should just move in with you and basta,” he then offers next time and David chokes on his drink. “Jesus, do you think it’s a secret how bad you have it for each other?” 

He hears Dick admonishing Nixon in the baclground, but the latter just brushes it off as usual. If there is something Lewis Nixon doesn’t do, it’s beating around the bush. 

How few! yet how they creep  
Through my fingers to the deep,  
While I weep -- while I weep!

 

Joe moves in with Webster the following winter. They don’t really talk about it, but somehow it happens. Joe’s things now occupy their two bedroom apartment, and Joe’s coffee mug is in the kitchen cupboard. His socks have found their spot next to David’s in the master bedroom, but a lot of his stuff lives in the other bedroom for the sake if the sanity of their neighbours. 

“I want to be with you,” Joe says on their first official night living together. “And if that is the price I must pay… damn, I have been worse off. If this means I don’t have to guess when is the next time I get the time to come and see you, but I can just pop my head around the corner and see you pouring over your books and notes anytime I want… fuck, David, I don’t give a shit that when your parents come to visit I have to sleep in the guest bedroom”.

And that basically settles it. They establish a routine almost straight away, and everything just falls into place as if they had been living together forever. 

Nixon congrgatulates them in his own special way, sending Joe a very expensive bottle of alcohol that makes him choke on his coffee so bad, that Webster has to clap him on the back quite forcefully.

“You told Nixon?” Joe asks, when he’s not couhing anymore, but David just shrugs.

“He kind of figured it out on his own… the Easy company rumor mill is workin its magick, Joe. If you thought we could keep this from the guys, you need your head examined”.

O God! can I not grasp  
Them with a tighter clasp?

Easy Company collectively descends upon them at David’s graduation. They arrive in their dress uniforms and stand up when he receives the diploma, and he has to swallow a lump in his throat. Those who have made it cheer and look genuinely happy, but he only sees Joe. He looks so proud and his eyes are sparkling like they did before the war.

Joe doesn’t think he has ever been this drunk in his life. Maybe when they found Hitler’s alcohol stash, and perhaos he has simply forgotten the mayhem they caused then, but on the night of David’s graduation, they all get drunk and end up spravled on their livin room floor in a big pile, not really caring about anything.

It feels like the good old days, and Joe counts his blessings. Maybe he will never have a nice Jewish girl and many little Liebotts running around, but his Mama is now at peace with it. Joe knows he doesn’t want it anymore, since the life he has chosen is here. Or wherever they decide to move to next. They are free, not tied to a place and full of life. He knows he can find a job anywhere, drive his cab and cut hair, and Web can write his shark tales.

Their first home was Toccoa, their second – the war, and perhaps this is the best time to create their first real home together somewhere quiet, with enough rooms to host Easy Company reunions, and a garage for Joe’s cab. Perhaps they can have a library for David’s books and a small shelf for Joe’s comics. He’s not, for the love of anything, giving up Flash Gordon. 

Liebgott catches a pair of blue eyes watchin him, and his face splits into a grin. Maybe one day they can be who they are in the eyes of society. Now he feels all right just playing by the rules and not playing with fire unnecessarily. He feels Web’s fingers touching his for a brief fraction of a moment and his breath tickles the back of Joe’s neck, as lips ghost over the skin there unnoticed by anybody else.

He catches Nixon raising a glass in a salute and grinning at him from where he is sitting on the floor, back touching Dick’s legs, and Joe winks at him, making Dick become a deep shade of red. His hand never leaves Nixon’s shoulder though. 

Joe looks around the room and there is pride leamin in every drunken corner of the livin room. He could have never guessed that they would be able to get back from Europe. His heart feels heavy for a second for his brothers whose last resting place is somewhere in a frozen European forest or a rocky shore on a beach somewhere in the Pacific. Too many lives lost, too high a price.

O God! can I not save  
One from the pitiless wave?

 

“I found a house we could buy,” are the first words he hears, coming through the door couple of months down the line.

David is makin dinner and Joe’s stomach gives an appreciative rumble, but he’s too tired to care at the moment. He kicks off the shoes and washes up in the bathroom before sitting down in the livin room, placing his feet on the coffee table and letting out a deep sigh. 

David hands him a cold bottle of beer and drops a kiss on his head, before returning to the kitchen to get the chicken out of the oven, before it turns too crispy and dry. The silence that follows him around means Joe has had a long and hard day, so Web gives him space. He knows by now that Joe will drink two beers before he’s going to attempt to speak as a human being. The dinner table is already set and Webster is putting the water on when Joe’s arms slide around his wais and he humms into David’s shoulder, nibbling on his neck, before he mutters an apology which David just shrugs off.

They eat dinner in silence. Nobody says grace at their table, because David is not overly religious anyway, and neither is Joe. 

“You were saying something about a house,” Joe picks the topic up after dinner, when they do the dishes side by side and Webster’s hands are covered in soap, while he washes, rinses and then hands Joe the dishes for drying.

“Yeah, Nixon called. Apparently they are travelling through the country at the moment,” Joe snorts. He mercilessly teases David about the amount of time he spends on the phone to the Nixon-Winters household. “He saw a place we could buy in New York”.

“New York?” the surprise is evident in Joe’s voice, his eyes widening at the statement.

“I received a letter today,” David says, drying his hands and letting the water out of the sink, before he digs out two more beers and the letter. “The Wall Street Journal is offerin me a position with them…”

He doesn’t get to finish the sentence, because Joe’s mouth is suddenly on his in a fierce kiss, and David has to dig in his heels not to fall over from the sheer force of it. They have been talking about this for a while now, and he’s been waiting for updates for an equal amount of time. Joe’s mouth on his erases the train of thought, and he moans into the kiss. 

There is no other feeling in the world he enjoys more than Joe’s lips making a sweet assault on his, and his fingers pulling his shirt out of his trousers to let skilled fingers ghost over the skin. The sensation of Joe’s body sliding against his never gets old or boorin. It seems to get better each time, both of them learning each other… like re-reading a good book and finding something new and exciting every single time.

Is all that we see or seem  
But a dream within a dream?

They end up buying the house a week after David starts the job. It’s not a huge house, but Joe’s pride is evident when he carries their belongings inside. It has enough space for David’s books and Joe’s comics don’t have to be squished anywhere. He smiles when Webster spends about as much time on his comics as he does on organizing his own book collection. He thinks about the conversation they had in the back of the truck in Europe, when he questioned the other man about post-war plans.

The fate has had an interesting way of flipping Joe Liebgott off, especially where is comes to one David Kenyon Webster. If someone had put a hand on his shoulder and enlinghtened him about the life he was going to find himself in later in life, he would have torn the person a new one true Toccoa style. And yet, here he is.

Is he happy? Happiness is not something Joe is familiar with when he thinks about his life before. He has not been unhappy, just never tried to put into words his satisfaction level with the world.

But yes, yes he is happy.

The happiest day--the happiest hour  
My seared and blighted heart hath known,  
The highest hope of pride and power,  
I feel hath flown.


End file.
